10.31.2007

I’ve enclosed a slightly embarrassing picture of my radical costume this year, "Cosmic space dude." Every year we embark on a zombie trolley ride around the city of Boston to go party hopping and try to spook the general public.The highlight for me is wolfing down as many Halloween treats as I can at manage to eat at each party. I had way too many spooky shrimp, devious deviled eggs and other tasty Halloween treats. Not to mention plenty of devil's punch which may have caused me to space dance with my snazzy silver space cape.

We will be heading out to Salem Massachusetts to take in the festivities tonight, maybe we'll see you there!

10.26.2007

This month, we were lucky enough to try our hands at a favorite New England tradition, apple cider pressing.

The idea first came about when our good friends in Shelburne Falls obtained a cider press which was built years ago but apparently had been "forgotten" about. We were shocked to discover this, but later learned the press was shared with a family friend who also took part in the building process and had been hiding it in their garage.

In order to make a significant amount of cider, we realized early on it would be quite expensive so we used our Shelburne connections to work a deal with the owner of a local apple orchard. Instead of picking perfect apples from the trees with everyone else, we followed a man in a golf cart to the back of the orchard who directed us to our ground apples. Sure the apples were full of bruises, bumps and other imperfections, but faired wonderfully for the cider (especially since they had higher sugar content from all that sitting around.) We heard tree apples are for snobs anyway. No time was wasted and quickly grabbed every apple we could cram into a Chevy Malibu. Don’t worry though; no members of The Salted Cod actually drive a Chevy Malibu.

I was given a lot of flack from the rest of our crew (particularly from a fellow Cod) for wanting to wash the apples before grinding them into a delicious juicy pulp. Apparently dirt on the apples provides character to your cider. Bull.

In the end, we compromised by hosing the apples down on the grass. After our short set back, we finally began grinding the apples. Although fun at first, grinding was far more labor intensive than we expected. It turns out that food bloggers are weaker than most folks, including large five year-olds. Luckily, one female member of our crew had a blue ribbon arm for grinding apples. When she became tired from cranking she’d simply switch off with the five year-old. It seemed like a good system.

In case you were wondering, the ground apples were being caught and filtered by some old cheesecloth found in a junk drawer. I was skeptical of this at first but must admit, it really did the trick. So basically, once you’ve ground as many apples as you can fit in the barrel lined with cheesecloth, the press is then lowered and the cider begins to flow. If the press is lowered too quickly the cider flow will change from a fountain trickle to a small waterfall so we had to keep testing its limits until the right pressure was found.

We also discovered during this step (to no one's surprise) that bees love cider. We tried our hardest to shoo any cider-loving bees away from the press but one or two may have reached their fate and passed through. Of course, most of our crew didn't mind dirt in their cider so obviously a few bees didn’t phase them.

The cider was then filtered through cheesecloth one more time and poured into clean gallon jugs our Shelburne friends apparently bartered for from a local farmer.

We repeated these steps of washing, grinding, pressing and bottling the apples for the next three or four hours with relaxing kayaking breaks throughout the day.

In the end, we used every ground apple which produced around twelve gallons of cider. Because our cider was unpasteurized (with a fridge life of around one week), most of the cider was frozen for later enjoyment. I’m looking forward to sipping hot mulled cider this winter. We also provided the compost with large amounts of apple pulp.

A helpful hint when picking ground apples; wear clothing with long sleeves…especially if there is a nasty patch poison ivy surrounding your apples. It will really help prevent two long weeks of having to explain to your friends why you only have poison ivy on your forearms.

We have some cider surprises in store for the very near future, so stay tuned. Seriously.

Click here to view the complete photo set from our day on our flickr site

10.18.2007

We just wanted to take a minute to share our lunch with you. It’s rare that The Salted Cod gets stuck in a lunchtime routine but we seem to be handling this okay.

We have been making a small salad with arugula, cherry tomatoes, and shaved carrots (everything but the tomatoes came from our CSA) and topped with a quick lemon vinaigrette.

We also purchased three year barley miso from South River Miso here in Massachusetts. Just plop an over sized table spoon of miso into a coffee mug with a lid and add some furikake for extra flavor. This is a Japanese seasoning which consists of a mixture of sesame seeds, bonito flakes and seaweed. To finish, we add fresh tofu and chopped scallions. This has worked out to be a quick and easy lunch at work. When ready to eat, just go to the water cooler and add hot water. Talk about instant soup, take that ramen noodles!

We're not one to eat at our desk or be chained indoors at lunch so we usually take it to the streets.

10.09.2007

The Salted Cod is never one to turn down a roadside stand. We’ve spent a lot of time in Maine this summer and this is the one establishment that we kept hearing and reading about but never had a chance to make it there. Finally we did.

Flo’s Hot dogs in Kittery Maine has been in operation since 1959. Flo dogs have been revered by locals, tourists, truckers and food critics alike. This is a one woman operation working out of a simple shack serving up dogs, soda, and chips. The floor slants upwards as you get closer to placing your order. We heard rumors that the older lady behind the counter has been compared to the soup nazi in Seinfeld, turning away customers who don’t order fast enough or leave the door open. One story goes a trucker stopped in to get a cup of coffee; she asks “how about a dog?” The trucker says “I ate down the street.” She says “you can get your coffee down the street too.” We unfortunately did not see her on our trip.

Inches away from hitting the ceiling at 5’8, the line was long and crowd was hungry. One larger (honestly large) man in line ahead of us suggested we order the house special. This consists of a steamed dog and bun topped with mayo, sauce and celery salt. We ordered 2, our friend ordered six.

The dogs were quite tasty and very soft, we were hesitant to order mayo on a dog but it worked quite well and we will never turn down the advice of a man of that stature. As for the sauce, from what we could take it was onions reduced in a molassesey sauce giving it the taste and look of Boston baked beans.Our belly was quite happy and was actually barking for one more. This is a great stop for some classic American road food.